


Advent: Regret

by FyrMaiden



Series: Klaine Advent 2015 [18]
Category: Glee
Genre: Blood, M/M, Scars, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5453957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine knows that the life they've built for themselves is over when he wakes up to running water and an empty bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent: Regret

**Author's Note:**

> Cheating ever so slightly with this one; it's an old unfinished WIP with an ending tacked on. I'm sorry!

The pipes are old in the loft. They clatter and rattle and groan in protest, and it’s not usually a problem but Blaine has the days marked off on the calendar throughout the year, and he knows that the rumbling in the walls this morning don’t herald Kurt rising early. The bed has been cold since he woke up at a little before 1am, and has remained cold as he watched the minutes click past on the clock. He knows, in his heart, that this will be the last month in Brooklyn, that they will be packing up and moving on as soon as he rises, and so he rolls onto his side, away from the clock and the breaking dawn and closes his eyes firmly against the inevitable.

When he wakes again, it’s to the smell of cooking, to pancakes and coffee, and Kurt’s tentative smile. Kurt, who looks exactly like himself now, except his hair is flatter than it should be. Pajama pants hang low on hip hips, and his t-shirt is stuck to his stomach, wrinkled where it was pulled on whilst his skin was still damp. Blaine can see the strip of skin between the two, and his mouth curls into a smile. He imagines a different morning, all the ways he could wake up happier and be able to pull Kurt to him and press his nose and his mouth to that tease of flesh, kiss and push and play until Kurt’s t-shirt is rucked up and his pants are pushed lower. He imagines the ways this could have gone, and mourns the loss without confirmation, because at 5.15, their bed was half empty, half cold, and the shower was running. 

“Good morning,” Kurt says, his voice bright. He pushes a tray across the bed toward Blaine, who shifts and pushes himself upright, straightening his own vest so that it’s not strangling him. There is a flower in a vase on his tray, and he stares at it for slightly too long. 

“Kurt,” he says, looking up, his eyes Bambi-wide and full of questions, and Kurt doesn’t say anything for too many seconds. When he does speak, it’s only to advise Blaine to eat as much as he can, and then he’s on his feet and slipping out of their room, the curtain wafting closed behind him. Blaine stares at his tray, at the syrup on his pancakes, at his coffee with the foam bubbles dissolving slowly, and then he realises he’s staring at it through a haze of tears. The yellow flower almost seems to laugh as he picks up his fork, lump in his throat looming larger as the fork nears his plate and almost locking his jaw as he cuts his breakfast into pieces. He chokes down as much as he can stomach, and sets the half he can’t eat aside as he puts his socked feet on the floor.

Outside of their room, Kurt has already started gathering the belongings he wants to keep into neat piles. Books he can’t leave behind. Small ornaments that he is attached to. Presents that Blaine has brought home for him over the years. Trinkets and mementos piling onto the old sofa that they acquired from the sidewalk when they moved in. He looks up when Blaine emerges, offers a smile that wavers and fades in the face of Blaine’s sadness, and goes to him, wraps strong arms around him. Blaine’s can’t help but hold him in return.

“You should pack,” Kurt says, and Blaine nods against him but doesn’t move, kisses his neck tenderly instead, and then his jaw. Kurt’s head tilts, and the groan that rumbles low in his throat, deep in his chest, could almost be a growl. Maybe it is. If they’re leaving, it’s because he’s eaten, and if he’s eaten then the animal is closer to the surface. The noise forces his lips from Kurt’s skin, pushes him back a stumbling step, and Kurt’s gaze lowers to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he says, soft, quiet, ineffably sad. Blaine feels his fingers twisting the wedding band around the finger of his left hand and he consciously stops, picks up a throw from the back of the sofa and folds it into a neat square, puts it on top of the pile Kurt has assembled.

“You promised,” he says quietly, his eyes locked on the pile that is their life together, all the things they have that mean anything. It’s a meagre pile to account for a little over two decades. “You promised that this would be the last move, that we could stay.” 

His hands rub idly over his ribs, over the lattice traces of scars that loving Kurt has left him with. Loving the animal that lives beneath his beautiful exterior hasn’t always been easy, but it’s been worth it. Still, he is creeping up on forty years of age, and he’s been rootless since he was 18. He’s made a person his home, because it was the only option he had, and then there was New York, and Brooklyn, and the last eight years, which have been the most normal they’ve ever achieved after years of moving endlessly from low rent motels to cheap apartments, stopping nowhere for long enough to know other people. He misses knowing people, having friends he could share a beer with, watch the game with. His life is Kurt, and Kurt takes up a lot of space.

His body is rigid when Kurt’s arms wrap around him, but he turns his head slowly to look at him over his shoulder. Kurt’s piercing blue eyes are clouded grey. “I’m sorry,” Kurt says again, quietly, inches from his face, his breath ghosting over Blaine’s skin. He drops his head and buries his nose in Blaine’s shoulder, and Blaine can feel his resistance ebbing, flagging, flowing away from him. There are tears in his throat, filling his sinuses, burning in his eyes, and he takes a deep breath that he holds in his chest, wills the feeling away. Even so, the exhale is wobbly and his voice, when he speaks, is tight and untrustworthy.

“Don’t, Kurt,” he says. “Don’t - we got comfortable and we got lax and we forgot.”

“I forgot,” Kurt responds, his grip on Blaine tightening, pulling him in against him, and Blaine stumbles back the half step into Kurt’s body. The jolt frees the tears and Kurt turns him around bodily, wraps him in his arms and holds him as he cries, until his own arms are wrapping slowly around Kurt’s body and holding him tight, too tight, perhaps, his fingers digging into Kurt’s t-shirt, pulling it out of shape. The thing is, they’ve had the wolf under control, kept it fed and quiet and invisible, out of sight and forced out of mind whilst they pretended to be like everybody else, whilst they’d held down jobs and maintained friendships and held potluck dinner parties on Friday nights with those friends, crossing every month without an incident off of their calendars. Every month without new scars on Blaine’s battered body. Every month without a panic, and a slow count through to the next month, wondering whether this one is the one where their luck runs out.

Their luck’s run out, and Blaine knows they should have seen it coming. 

“Do you even remember what you did?” he asks, and Kurt releases him, shakes his head once. 

“I was covered in blood,” he says. “I don’t think I hurt anyone, but -” 

Blaine breathes out sharply. He pulls himself away from Kurt, turns the television on, mutes it to watch the new ticker scroll across the screen. Behind him, Kurt continues to pile their lives into neat mounds. He removes the SIM from Blaine’s cell, and hands him the handset. Blaine stares at it, and then back at the screen of TV. No one is dead. No one is injured. But there is a trail of carnage, questions without answers. 

“Are you hurt?” Blaine asks, and Kurt shakes his head. 

“No,” he says. “We can’t stay, Blaine. If it happens again -”

Blaine chokes back any reply and nods his head instead. He knew that this would be his life when he fell in love with a wolf, but leaving never gets easier. At least no one is dead. No one is injured. No one _yet_ , anyway. He loves a wolf, and he’s still human - 

His breathing goes jagged and his ears burn, and he barely makes it to the bathroom before he loses what he ate of his breakfast to the toilet bowl. He wipes his mouth, brushes his teeth, and pulls up his t-shirt to examine the keloid scars, the claw and tooth marks that mar his own soft body. He’s still human, despite everything. He doesn’t know why, and he suspects that life for Kurt would be easier if they hadn’t been. He drops the hem of his shirt, and chokes back another sob.

When he looks up again, Kurt is leaning against the bathroom door. He opens his arms and beckons Blaine to come to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, for the thousandth time, and Blaine nods as he curls himself into the warmth of Kurt’s too-hot body.

It doesn’t make it hurt any less when they pull the door of the loft closed for the last time, and traipse down the stairs with what they can carry. 

And it doesn’t make the sense of loss less acute when they drive away, the city fading behind them as they drive south, always and forever chasing the sun.


End file.
